


a process in the weather of the heart

by alltheseghosttowns (jane_wanderlust)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, F/M, M/M, What Have I Done
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-18 19:26:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13688220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jane_wanderlust/pseuds/alltheseghosttowns
Summary: If someone were to ask Rey to coax open the jaws of illness, and tease out the cause, she thinks she wouldn’t point to the War, but the carcass it left in its wake. She thinks she would say, if asked: The world's given up on hope and gone sick with restraint.But no one asks her for her thoughts. Why would they listen to a girl from a place separate from separation itself—somewhere even forgiveness fears to tread?  They'd think:What does she really know of living?They'd think:We haven't the space for your dreams.





	a process in the weather of the heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bissextile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bissextile/gifts).



> I sincerely hope this is anywhere close to something you were hoping for, but, yeah...I don't know really know what happened here. This thing grew into a beast. (I'm sorry!) 
> 
> Also, there is a reference to some car repair being done, and I have zero knowledge of that realm. I attempted to Google, but if that whole bit is totally incorrect, please just kindly pretend it's not...lol?
> 
> This is _Star Wars_ meets _Stranger Things_ meets _The Coast of Utopia_ by Tom Stoppard meets my fears for our future.
> 
> Massive thanks to my lovely friend who beta read this/let me throw my anxieties at her.
> 
> **Title is from a[poem](https://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/dylan-thomas/a-process-in-the-weather-of-the-heart/) by Dylan Thomas.**
> 
> **Chapter/Part I title is from[Threshold](http://www.theartdivas.com/2016/06/threshold-by-ocean-vuong.html) by Ocean Vuong.**

  


. 

  
**part I: my name knelt down inside me, asking to be spared**

  


. 

  
There are certain things that stick in your teeth. This is a list that Rey keeps close to her, greedy as she is, slowly adding through the years to its weight as it hangs somewhere near her memory. There are endless things that pass through the mouth, but there are much fewer that stick: sand from a black blizzard; the stringy fibers of calcified soy meat; the coppery taste of her own blood the time she got lost in the Badlands and her dried mouth split like a petal; and lies, especially the ones she knows best how to tell. 

_I’m fine; I’m not lonely; they’ll be back._

  


. 

  
Sometimes, Rey thinks it would’ve been better to let the world burn.  
  
She’s watching, from her place in line outside of Plutt’s station, as a man, forehead and back braised with sweat, pries the mouth of another man open and shoves a piece of rusted metal into the gaping dark space he’s made. There’s a muted scream cut short by a wet click. Rey watches the man’s knuckles whiten as he holds the back of the other man’s neck with one hand and _pushes_ with other. Her own throat burns.  
  
She thinks it might’ve been a certain kindness, to raze the world bone clean and let everything be still.  
  
There’s a thick gurgle, and the softened thud of a body dropping to sand. The piece of metal rolls out of the man's ruined mouth and Rey recognizes the hinge of an aeronautical wing beneath the blood and spit. Her fingers twitch, muscles bunching to reach as she thinks about how a bit of lye soap will cut through the gore and the ruin and maybe fill her belly for one more day.  
  
“ _Girl_!” Plutt's guttural voice breaks through her mental calculation, and Rey blinks, body already moving forward, even as her mind still trips on the numbers, the sustenance ravaged by blood. Her stomach curls in on itself.  
  
But then again, she thinks, hauling her dirtied sack of scavenged parts onto Plutt’s counter with sun-blistered hands, what does she really know of kindness? 

  


. 

  
Rey pushes the allotment of soy meat that Plutt has exchanged for her trade into her still half-empty bag and pulls it closer to her body. Her other hand tightens on her staff, the one she’d welded herself from a collage of mismatched parts six years ago when a handful of traders had decided that her day’s collection of scraps should be theirs.  
  
She’d been left bloodied with a cracked rib, alone, barely able to stand. She’d crawled back to her hut, and laid in the darkness, where hunger and pain took turns curdling her gut. Rey had closed her eyes then, as she still sometimes does, and pressed her tongue to her teeth, where she tasted the fat of the fictions she’d created, and fed on them for two unending days. Her lies sat thick in the grooves of her mouth like the skin on the crust of decadence gone stale.  
  
_I’m fine; I’m not lonely; they’ll be back._  
  
After, she’d forgone food for nearly a week when she’d kept the parts she collected, the ones that would become her staff, instead of bringing them to Plutt. And then...then she stood.  
  
The first day Rey had carried her staff—tight in her shaking grip, metal hot on her skin—she'd broken the wrist of the man who’d been foolish enough to try and pull from her the sack of parts she’d scavenged. He’d cried out as he fell and she’d grinned and spat at him. She was fourteen; she was hunger made flesh.  
  
In the years since, scratching the days into the wall of her scrapped-together home, Rey has learned. There is still much she’s unaware of, young and distanced as she is, but there are things she knows with bone-breaking clarity: how to wait inside emptiness; the feeling of clutching at faith in ghosts; what it means to endure.  
  
She’s learned about the world, too—even out in the Jakku Wilds—and how it had given up any pretense of grace after the War. She’s learned about all of history’s time spent watching the stars, looking for some external provision of doom, when the real threat wasn’t lurking in the space between moons, but in the space inside people: a territory of hatred grown selfish and wild. 

Sometimes, when the electricity’s failed or she’s too hollow to sleep, she thinks about how they live now: in the Aftermath, the barren space that’d sprung from humanity’s inability to sate its capacity for ruin. She knows about the War, the suffering, the _rage_ ; about the millions upon millions of lives lost, and with them, the hope. She thinks maybe she can forgive the War, but she can’t absolve the world of surrendering hope. Earth may have wrung itself dry, but Rey clings to hope like a glutton.  


_They’ll be back._  
  
The sounds of a struggle pull Rey from her thoughts and she pauses to scan the outskirts of Jakku’s trading pit. Her eyes land on the source of the noise: two men engaged in what appears to be a pushing contest against the tin wall of one of the pit’s stalls. 

Rey pauses briefly and suddenly finds that’s she’s running _toward_ the two men, mystified by her own actions, even as she moves. She thinks back to the moment from earlier, the glassy-eyed gaze of the man on the sand, his mouth seeping rust colored spit as he’d lain there, and how all she’d been able to think of was the price the piece that had ended his life would fetch at Plutt’s station. 

She pushes her feet faster, and sees the younger of the two men fall to the ground, the other immediately clambering on top of his back. 

Maybe it’s the fact that the older man had attacked from behind, maybe it’s the sound the younger man makes from where his face is being pushed in the sand: a frantic mix of anger and disbelief. Maybe it’s the fact that nothing in this world is fair anymore, and she suddenly wants to set it all on fire; maybe it’s all of these things, maybe it’s something else besides, but Rey’s staff is swinging steadily in her grip before she can decide why she’s doing it. 

It collides with the older man’s skull with a resounding _thunk_ , the sound of metal on skin, on _bone_ , causing Rey’s fingers to vibrate. He instantly crumples and drops to the sand. Rey hesitates and then rolls him onto his back with her boot, feeling his chest rise beneath her foot as she does so. 

_Not dead._ It should probably serve as some sort of warning that the only reaction she has in response to this is simple detached neutrality. 

“Thank you.” 

Rey starts and steps back to look at the other man still on the ground, the one who’d been attacked. His skin is dark, and there is sand stuck in the rivulets of sweat on his face; he doesn’t look much than she is. He looks up at Rey, the expression on his face caught somewhere between gratefulness and fear, before scrambling to his feet and holding out his hand. 

Rey looks at his outstretched palm suspiciously and then raises her gaze slowly from his hand to his face, her body tensed, searching for a trap. 

“What do you want?” Rey asks the man stiffly. “Are you looking to trade? Because I don’t have anything and Plutt’s station is that way,” she finishes, pointing in the direction opposite to the one she’d come from. 

The man looks puzzled for a second before a wave of realization washes over his face. 

“No, I’m not,” he answers, “but that explains why that asshole who tried to jump me kept insisting he would give me three cans of soy meat for my jacket. Even though I kept telling him— _very politely_ —that it wasn’t for sale.” He pauses for a second. “He didn’t seem to understand the concept though. So I had to reinforce my point. With my fists.” He smiles, a touch smugly, at this, as though he hadn’t just been the one on the ground with his face pressed to the sand, clearly on the losing end of that bargain. 

“Is that what you want then?” Rey asks, a hollow sort of disgust settling in her stomach. She’s heard of these types before, the ones who come from the cities to the Wilds to satiate some reckless need for danger in their blood. She hardens. “To stir up fights with drunk traders? Because I can _assure_ you—” 

“ _No_ ,” the man cuts her off, and his tone has shifted into one of candid seriousness. “I’m looking for my friend.” He’s earnest in a way that settles Rey’s gut and has her wanting to believe him at the outset, even if life has taught her time and again that blind trust is the quickest way to an empty stomach and smarting bones. But the man’s face is open and there’s kindness in his eyes, tucked gently next to the urgency. 

He brings a hand up to the air near the top of his own head. “He’s about this tall, dark hair, goes by the name of Poe?” 

Rey dials back through her memory, searching for any bite of familiarity. The details he gives aren’t exactly unique, but she still finds herself disappointed to come up blank; for whatever reason, she truly wants to help him. 

“No, sorry,” she tells him, finding she means it even more when his face falls. “Jakku isn’t really a tourist destination. What makes you think he came here?” 

“He said he was coming here for intel,” he replies simply, as if that clarifies things. It doesn’t. 

_Intel?_ Rey looks at him for a moment, confused by such an idea. “Intel?” she echoes her own thoughts. “There _is_ no intel in Jakku,” she finishes slowly, as though if she takes her time, the man will realize his mistake. 

“That’s what I told him,” the man says wryly, a halfhearted smirk on his face. It quickly drops. “Poe didn’t really tell me much,” he continues and then frowns. “Look, all I know is that he was supposed to be back yesterday, and he wasn’t. So I decided to come find him.” 

“Yesterday?” Rey repeats, incredulously. “He’s only been gone a _day_ , and you came looking?” She’s gone much longer between _meals_. Then she wonders what it must be like, being so important to someone that they can’t abide your absence for 24 small hours. 

The man straightens his shoulders and blinks at her. “Of course,” he responds, as if it’s obvious. To Rey, it is not. To Rey, it’s an extraneous expense of energy based on a loose understanding of time. 

“Poe _always_ comes back.” Rey tries not to flinch at his words. “So when he didn’t turn up on base or comm us, I came looking.” A shade of embarrassment clouds the fervency on his face. “But I ran into some trouble a few miles outside of Jakku and had to make the rest of the way on foot.” 

“What kind of trouble?” Rey asks, thinking of the more desperate sorts that lurk the outer rim of the Jakku Wilds. She thinks about this man traversing that bleak unknown for a single person and again she finds she can’t understand. What must it be like, to be so loved? 

“The vehicle kind,” he responds. “My truck broke down. Like, _completely_.” He sighs and drops his gaze to the dust at their feet, a vulnerability spreading over him and bunching his brows. She finds herself watching as he rubs the cuff of his jacket between his thumb and forefinger, the gesture so absentminded, Rey’s not even sure he realizes he’s doing it. “I was worried that the delay might cause me to miss him. Now I’m not even sure he was ever here.” 

The honesty and the way he says it—so sincere, so _afraid_ —causes something in Rey to constrict. “I can help you.” It’s out before she even realizes she was thinking it. 

His eyes immediately dart to hers, looking surprised. “Really?” and he sounds so hopeful that Rey already knows she will do whatever she can to ensure this man finds his friend. 

She swallows, smiling a little. “Yes. I can fix almost anything. I’m sure I can get your truck running again,” she pauses, assessing. “I’m Rey.” 

He smiles back. “I’m Finn, and,” he leans into her space, “I’m with the Resistance. _We’re_ with the Resistance. I mean, Poe and I. Poe and I are with the _Resistance_ ,” he finishes with hushed relish, looking a bit awed at his own confession, like he’s revealing to her some holy secret he can't believe he knows. 

Rey blinks at him, some brief recognition surfacing. The Resistance: a group of rebels who’ve unified to fight back against the First Order, and something that’s always been so removed from Rey she’s never acknowledged it outside of a diffused sense of admiration. It's difficult to dream of things like heroics when your chief concern centers on making sure you have enough calories in your system to fight past the tremors that wrack your body when you're scrubbing someone else’s castoff parts. 

“Okay,” she finally responds. “Which way?” 

“You want to go now?” Finn asks, seeming a bit deflated at her lack of fanfare. 

“Yeah,” Rey replies, “I keep all my tools on me, so I have them already. Is that— Is that not okay?” 

“No, that’s fine,” he says quickly. “That’s _great_! I just— I can’t—” Finn pauses, breathes out, and looks Rey straight in the eye. “Thank you.” 

She feels herself redden under the weight of his relief. “I haven’t even fixed anything yet, so you might want to save your appreciation,” she says, awkward in the face of his bald kindness. 

Finn grins at her and straightens the lapels of his jacket. “It’s this way.” He turns toward her and waits for Rey to move before he does, then falls in step next to her, his gratitude a thing that sits heavy in the air. 

  


. 

  
The wind on Rey’s face feels humid, different from the flat arid heat of Jakku, sticking the sweaty strands of hair that have escaped her three buns to her skin. The windows of Finn’s truck are rolled down, and he’s focused on the empty road with a concentration that furrows his brow, broken only by the questions he peppers the cab with. 

There’s something about the lack of human life this far outside of Jakku that presses heavily upon her like iron. It’s shocking to realize that their world—even outside of the Wilds—has dwindled to such a fine point, edges worn sharp by struggle, by time. 

They’ve been driving for a while now, but the fractured clock on the dash does nothing to clue Rey in to any solid passage of time. She glances at the sun where it slopes across the sky and from its angle she guesses they’re about two hours away from her home. 

She swallows back the thrust of panic that flares in her chest at this, the same one that had reared when the landscape around them had shifted from the flat, bitter sands of the world she knows into something softer, something more alive. But there’s fascination there, too, sidling along the flush of her throat; she’s never been this far from Jakku in all of her memories—though she knows she’d come from somewhere else—and she’s never seen so much _green_. 

She smiles and closes her eyes as she leans back into the seat, the warm drag of the repaired engine soothing to her ears. She’d agreed to come with Finn out of some unspoken sense of understanding, bending to the look on his face when he’d asked her. 

  


. 

  
Finn’s truck had been left about five miles outside of Jakku, and their walk to find it was a sweltering drag, the heat from the midday sun nearly baking the conversation out of Rey. 

But Finn had pushed on, his jacket wrapped around his waist, chattering enough to be friendly without pitching over the edge into a frustrating din. 

“How long have you lived in Jakku?” he asked, shading his eyes from the sun as he looked over at her. 

“Five thousand two hundred and four days,” Rey replied immediately, a number she knew as intimately as the callouses on the palms of her own hands. As soon as she said it, she wished she hadn’t. She could hear the vulnerability of it, and see the truth it revealed: a figure closely guarded, a sacred ritual whose growth had been watched as keenly as a farmer tracked his seedlings’ harvest. 

But to her relief, Finn didn’t say anything other than a quiet, “That’s a long time,” in a tone that made Rey think that maybe he, too, stayed vigilantly loyal to an accumulation of time. 

The answer to this had come later, when Rey was slick with grease and sweat where she stood elbow-deep in the belly of his truck. 

“I was with First Order,” Finn said, apropos of nothing. The way he said it, a potent blend of resentment and hesitation—like he was waiting for her to blame him, to place some verdict of guilt at his feet—made something ring in her ears. And she thought: here it is. This is Finn’s collection; this is his mosaic of tally-marks scratched into a wall. 

Rey paused momentarily in her work, reached a hand to her forehead to wipe away the sweat dripping into her eyes, and said, “But you’re not now?” 

She watched his relief wash over him, saw how it softened the muscles of his face. He smiled at her, close-mouthed but honest, and said, “I’m not now.” Rey returned his smile, nodding once, before leaning back over the engine block. 

“I was taken,” Finn continued, while Rey’s fingers pinched the fuel line, aligning its coupling with her wrench, “when I was a child. I was trained in the Stormtrooper program nearly my whole life.” 

He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, tapping a screwdriver against the fender he was leaning against. “The First Order is all I can remember. It’s funny because I _know_ there was something before, but I can’t see any of it. Sometimes I try to pull up my mother’s image in my mind, or who my father might’ve been, but all I get is blank space.” 

Rey leaned in further, pushing up on the balls of her feet to stretch her body toward the tubing she needed. 

“I should probably be angry about that,” Finn said, “and for a while, I tried very hard to be, but all I can feel is…relief.” A bead of sweat dripped off the end of Rey’s nose and sizzled when it hit the metal below. “It doesn’t hurt as much when you don’t remember what you’ve lost.” 

Rey dropped her wrench, the sound of its landing swallowed by sand. She held still a beat, and then pushed herself up and out from under the hood, thinking of all of the things she should say. She settled for the truth. 

“I’m sorry,” she told Finn, and felt it echo its honesty back to herself. She debated telling Finn that she, too, knew what that was like: having watercolor memories where your life should have been. But where he felt peace, she still couldn’t settle, and she was afraid what that might mean. 

“Don’t be,” Finn replied. “If I hadn’t have been there then, I would’ve never wound up where I am now,” he knocked the screwdriver again, once, “you know, in the _Resistance_.” He still sounded so pleased by the very word, by the very concept of his own luck, that a corner of Rey’s mouth lifted in response. 

She took a grateful drag of the water bottle Finn had pulled from the front seat of the truck, swallowing to ask, “How’d that happen?” 

A soft look stole over Finn’s eyes. “Four months ago,” he started, “I was on a mission in a small dwelling near the outskirts of Coruscant. We were looking for people. The ones who’d been forgotten, the ones left behind,” he smiled humorlessly. “They’re always the easiest to recruit. They have nothing left. No family, no food, no _hope_.” Despite the heat, goosebumps erupted along Rey’s skin. 

“It’s worse than anyone knows,” Finn continued, “the First Order takes people in under the guise of offering shelter and protection, but they’re _programming_ them. They spend months rearranging their memories, wiping them clean, sucking out everything that made them who they were. And I saw them—these shells of people, by the thousands—walking around without anything happening inside them.” Finn scrubbed a hand over his mouth, his eyes finding Rey’s. “It was terrifying.” 

Rey swallowed again, but the movement was difficult from how dry her throat had become. 

“What did you do?” Rey asked, clenching a fist in the fabric of her pants. 

“I knew it was wrong,” he replied, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “But I didn’t know _how_ I knew. And I decided I needed to find out.” Finn shifted his weight and the leather of the jacket tied at his hip squeaked against the metal of the truck’s grill. 

“So, on that mission, I decided to run. I didn’t have much of a plan, besides, you know, _escape_ , but it turns out, I didn’t even need one.” Finn smiled again, this time a genuine stretch of skin and muscle and something deeper, too. “The Resistance got word of our mission, and they blew the whole thing wide open. One of their fighters saw me trying to escape, and rather than trying to stop me, he offered to come _with_ me. 

“I remember thinking he was crazy and when I stopped to gauge just _how_ crazy, he smiled and said, ‘Or you could come with us.’ So I did.” Finn was smiling with his whole being now. “That was Poe,” he said, “and that is who I’m going to find.” 

Rey smiled back at him. “It’s a good thing, what you did. What you’re doing. Not everyone would’ve made the same call,” she said, crouching down to retrieve her wrench. Just a bit more pressure, and the fuel system would be fixed. It was a small thing, repairing Finn’s truck, but one she felt proud of; it was a little piece of good that she had done to help. She was still smiling as she stood and bent over the truck again. 

“Not everyone is given the chance,” Finn said, as Rey realigned the connection and twisted, snapping it into place with a satisfying click. “Sometimes people surprise you, when they actually have a choice.” 

Rey hummed absentmindedly in agreement, running her fingers along the bits of metal and rubber, checking for any further weaknesses. She couldn’t find any, which meant the truck should start, which meant Finn would be leaving. Rey frowned as emptiness bottomed out her stomach. 

“You should come with me,” Finn said and Rey started so quickly she hit her head on the truck’s hood. She pressed a palm to her crown and turned to him. 

“What?” she asked, and despite knowing better, a spark of interest budded in her chest. 

Finn hurried on, “You should come with me,” he repeated, “to find Poe. If he’s not here, I need to get to Takodana.” At Rey’s quizzical look he continued, “It’s this little collective a few hours north. We’ve been there a couple of times. There’s a woman there that Poe gets a lot of his information from.” 

Rey looked at the ground, where sand was dusting the tops of her boots. “I can’t,” she said. “I have to stay in Jakku.” 

“Okay,” Finn agreed, “I can bring you back. We’ll only go as far as Takodana, and whatever we find, I’ll bring you back.” 

Rey still hesitated, even as the tang of possibility flooded her. 

“I—” she started but Finn cut in, meeting her eyes steadily. 

“This is not a recruitment speech, Rey,” he said, smiling. “You’re free to do whatever you want. Full honesty? I don’t really have a plan. I’m not the best at those, but,” he paused, his face growing serious again, “I have to _try_.” 

His face was so determined—so _hopeful_ —Rey felt herself giving in. Besides, she couldn’t deny to herself that she was curious. _What was out there, in the spread of life beyond Jakku?_

“Right after Takodana?” she asked and the grin on Finn’s face was blinding. 

“Right after Takodana,” he agreed. 

  


. 

  
Rey opens her eyes as she feels Finn slowing the truck. She glances at him questioningly. 

“There’s a First Order checkpoint up ahead,” he tells her, his knuckles whitening on the wheel. A wisp of fear brushes against her ribs. 

“Okay,” Rey says, dragging the word out a bit. “What should we do?” she asks Finn, sitting up straighter in her seat. 

“Nothing,” he says. “It’s no big deal. Just stay calm.” 

Rey frowns, “I _am_ calm,” she tells him, though she admits it’s not overly convincing. 

“I meant me,” he responds. Rey cuts her eyes to his face again. Fresh sweat has started to gather at his hairline. 

“Finn,” she starts, understanding lighting in her memory. “Are they going to recognize you?” 

“No,” he answers quickly, a hair _too_ quickly. “I wasn’t stationed anywhere near here. And besides, it’s not like they would remember me anyway. To them, we aren’t people, just numbers.” 

Despite the conviction in his voice, he shifts in his seat, firming his jaw. “We just need to be calm,” he repeats. Rey exhales slowly, though her heart picks up speed. 

“We can do this,” she tells him. 

“We can do this,” he echoes, but it’s nearly a whisper as they roll to a stop in front of a booth, where a uniformed man stands watching their approach. 

“Name and bloc code,” he says in a monotonous command, eyes trained to a clipboard in his hands. 

“Name is Finn, but we have no bloc. We live in the Wilds.” To his credit, Finn’s voice is steady. 

The man glances up from what he’s reading. “I’d hardly call that living,” he sneers, and Rey forces herself not to react. “Where are you going?” 

“Takodana,” Finn responds, tacking on a “sir.” 

“What are you doing in that cesspit?” he asks and, for the first time, passes his eyes over Finn to Rey. She tries to smile. She thinks she fails. 

“We heard there’s a Dejarik poker tournament, and, well, she plays a mean hand. Thought we might make some cash,” Finn answers, aiming for levity. This time, Rey succeeds at a smile, though it pulls too tight. 

“See that you do,” the man responds, bringing his eyes back to Finn, then scribbling something on his clipboard. “The First Order looks forward to your generous contribution upon your return.” He turns his head to the side and spits. 

“Understood, sir,” Finn replies. “Thank you, sir,” and something about this snaps the man’s head up to squint at Finn. 

“What did you say your name was again?” he asks. Rey hears the suspicion in his tone now, and she silently begs Finn to stay calm. 

But Finn doesn’t respond. When Rey looks at him, he’s frozen, staring straight ahead. Rey turns to follow his line of sight, and her brow furrows. All she sees is a man in a gray uniform stepping out of a small building a few meters ahead, his hair a blaze of red so bright it almost hurts to look at. 

The man in the booth starts to say something again but Finn must shake himself out of whatever trance he’d been in because he cuts the man off to respond, “It’s Finn.” 

“Just one—” the man begins, but Finn quickly throws out another frantic-sounding “Thank you!” before lifting his foot off the brake. 

Rey bottles up both her questions and her breath until they pass the red haired man standing by the building and the row of vehicles parked alongside it. When nothing happens, she released her lungs. 

“What was that?” she turns to Finn, who still seems a bit shocked. He readjusts his hands on the wheel and kicks their speed up a notch. 

“That was the walking migraine known as General Hux,” he says, his eyes briefly leaving the road to meet hers. He looks frightened. “He’s Commander over the entire faction that I belonged to.” A beat passes that’s riddled with alarm. “He shouldn’t be all the way out here. What is he _doing_ here?” 

“Maybe he’s also looking for a friend?” Rey jokes, trying to chip at the tension in the air. 

Finn doesn’t smile; he actually looks grimmer. “He doesn’t have friends.” 

Rey laughs, surprising herself. Her nerves are frayed, and the sound jumps out of her mouth without warning. But she feels better about it when Finn laughs in response. 

“I can’t believe we did that,” he says, grinning out at the still-abandoned road. 

“ _What_?” Rey cries, “I thought you said this was ‘no big deal!’” 

“Well, sure,” Finn answers, “in theory. That’s the first time I’ve done that since I defected,” he tells her, looking surprised himself, and she shakes her head in disbelief and laughs again, the muscles of her back loosening. 

They drive for another few minutes, Finn rambling about his luck, when Rey glances in the passenger mirror; there’s a black speck on road behind them. She shuts her eyes and presses her fingers to her lids momentarily, but when she opens them, the speck has grown, and the shape of a vehicle slides into view. 

“Finn,” she starts, but he doesn’t hear her through the stream of his own words. 

“ _Finn_ ,” Rey says again, voice rising with her concern. He stops talking. “Look behind us.” 

She watches him glance at the rearview mirror, “ _Shit_ ,” he hisses, and presses harder on the accelerator. “Shit!” 

“It’s fine!” Rey immediately responds, trying to sound pacifying. “It’s probably just another traveler,” she reasons. 

Finn looks at her. “Rey, how many other cars have you seen on this road?” 

She wraps her hands around the door handle and turns in her seat. The vehicle is clearly visible now: a sleek black machine that looks eerily similar to one of those that had been parked at the checkpoint. 

“Drive faster!” Rey yells, the engine already whining in protest. 

“I _am_ driving faster!” Finn shouts back, but she feels the truck give another guttural tug toward more speed as he says it. 

Rey is swiveling back to face front when she hears the first _ping_ of a bullet from where it bounces off something metallic on the truck. Her eyes widen in disbelief. 

“Get down!” Finn yells, lifting a hand off the wheel to push at her head. Rey bats his arm away but does as he asks, crouching low in her seat. 

There’s a stomach-churning sound of shattering glass and Rey sees shards of glass catch bits of the sun as they explode from the side mirror. 

“ _Shit_!” she swears, and Finn slams his foot on the gas pedal, pressing it down as far as it will go. There are rings of white around his irises, his eyes gripped with fear. 

“Finn!” she calls from where she’s huddled down in her seat. His eyes swing to hers the same moment the truck _lurches_. There’s an explosive pop of rubber and an angry hiss of air, and the truck slides out of Finn’s control. 

The world tilts sideways as they careen into a ditch. Rey’s body pitches and her hand smashes on the dash, pinned between her chest and unforgiving plastic. 

When the truck stops, she barely flexes her fingers, numbly checking for injury, before she’s pushing against the door. Finn slams his own door open and when they meet at the crushed lip of the truck, he wordlessly grabs her hand and they run. 

The land around them is thick with trees, and for a disorienting moment, Rey feels like she’s forgotten how to move on such unfamiliar terrain. But her body adjusts quickly, and soon she’s ducking under branches and skimming through fallen brush as if she’d been doing it all of her life. 

She strains to listen for the sounds of a pursuit, but it’s hard to hear anything over their own ragged breathing and the jagged pulse of her heart as it rushes in her ears. 

They pick up their pace, and the woods are so dense now, the sun seeps through weakly overhead. _I bet it’s lovely here_ , she thinks giddily, brain bright with terror. 

Rey nimbly leaps over a fallen tree trunk but Finn must not see it, because she hears the slam of his body as his hand is ripped from hers. She’s already pushed a few paces ahead before it settles into her adrenaline-addled mind. When she turns back for him, five First Order officers are crashing through the trees. 

“Run!” Finn yells, but Rey still pauses. There’s one gray uniformed man barely ten feet from her. “Rey! _Run_!” She catches Finn’s eye, and that same sense of understanding passes between them. _This isn’t it for us._ Rey briefly shuts her eyes, turns, and runs. 

A gracefulness she never knew she possessed aids her, panic tampered by the ease with which she finds herself passing through the forest. She swerves to miss a low-hanging branch and finds herself in a clearing. 

Two First Order officers come bursting through seconds after her. _Why aren’t they shooting_? floats erratically across her thoughts as she pivots on her foot and lunges forward again, muscles straining with effort. But she’s barely taken five more steps before a third agent cuts off her path, grabbing her with bruising force. 

Rey immediately sinks her teeth into the forearm braced across her chest, then pitches her head back as hard as she can. There’s a sickening crunch of bone, and a distressed yelp of pain. His grip loosens and she struggles out of his hold. Rey turns to assess the situation, but a blinding flash of pain on her side stops her cold. 

The man holds one hand to his bleeding nose while his other flashes a knife, red with her blood, tauntingly shaking it at her. Rey presses a hand to her torso and turns away from him, only to see the other two officers closing in. 

“Nowhere to run, girl,” the officer she’d injured jeers, his voice thick with blood. 

Something is rising in Rey, blossoming in her stomach and blooming in her chest. She thinks it’s panic, but no, it feels different, _tastes_ different, thrumming hotly in her veins. She shivers; something is _awake_. 

Out of the corner of her eye, Rey sees something— _someone?_ —step from the woods: a gossamer being wrapped in darkness and looming with a wraith-like grace. 

The thing in Rey climbs her ribs and burns up her throat, and it’s too much. She lifts her arms and _screams_. 

The officers suddenly drop to the ground like puppets whose strings have been cut. Her voice dies in her mouth, and _now_ it is panic; now it is fear. Rey vaguely registers the shadowy figure striding toward her before the world goes dark. 

  


. 

  
When Rey wakes it’s to a humming quiet wrapping its emptiness around her aching mind. She blinks a few times, eyes stinging in the slant of light threading through a window. From her brief appraisal, it appears to be nearing dusk. She moves her head, and her gaze lands on someone seated near her feet, although the majority of the figure is hidden in fast-deepening shadows. 

“Where am I?” she asks, her voice sticking painfully in her throat. _Why does my head hurt so much?_

“Safe,” the man replies simply, and his voice is a deep thing, distorted slightly by something obscuring his mouth. Rey blinks again and forces her swimming vision to settle on him. When he comes into focus, she startles. 

The man is large, broad shouldered and most likely tall, although he seems to be trying to fold himself into a smaller shape. He’s dressed entirely in black, from his boots to his head, which is covered in the draped hood of a long wool coat. He leans forward into the spray of light and Rey sees that his whole face is disguised by the smooth black and chrome paneling of night vision goggles and a solid black swath of cloth tied over the lower half of his face. She feels her pulse quicken. 

“Where’s Finn?” she asks him, steeling her voice into something calmer than anything she feels. 

“You mean the _traitor_ you were running with?” the man responds, nearly spitting the word. _Traitor_? Rey’s mind stutters on it. “I have no idea,” he finishes and even through the goggles, she can sense him watching her. “When I got to the clearing, it was only you.” 

Rey frowns and tries again. “Where am I?” 

The man sighs and through the cloth it’s a muted gust of sound. “In an abandoned cabin, the specific coordinates of which I don’t know. I assume we are close enough to the nearest First Order satellite base that my men will be along in time,” he pauses, “but far enough that their _incompetence_ has caused them delay.” He sounds frustrated. Rey feels like she’s going to throw up. 

“ _First Order_? Why am I here? What do you want with me?“ She’s panicking and she tries to sit up, but something in her torso _pulls_. Rey blanches and immediately lays back again, the pain a throbbing ache in her side. She glances down to where a patch of black fabric is haphazardly laid on her skin. She goes to lift the edge— 

“ _Don’t_ ,” he says and his voice almost sounds pleading. Rey frowns. “You were injured,” he tells her needlessly. Rey has been wounded enough times to know what has happened. She scoffs around the pain that’s raging in both her skull and her side. 

“Yeah. By _your_ men,” she sneers at him. He doesn’t seem moved by her anger. 

“An unintended occurrence,” he responds calmly. “You were not what we wanted.” Rey flinches at this, the knowledge of which has been her first and truest curriculum. 

“What did you want then?” she finds herself asking, hoping that if she continues talking, she can distract herself from her pain, from the situation in its entirety. If she can break this nightmare into manageable parts, into something she can _fix_ , she knows she will be fine. She _hopes_ she will be fine. 

“It doesn’t matter now,” the man responds, and leans forward again. “Who are you?” he asks Rey. 

“It doesn’t matter,” she parrots back to him. He tilts his head a bit to the side. 

“It does to me,” he responds, and it startles Rey in its softness. She swallows. 

“I’m no one,” she answers, and for some reason, she finds she can’t look at him, staring instead at the dirtied walls of the cabin. “I’m from Jakku. I trade parts.” 

“So you’re a scavenger?” he asks, but there’s little more than base neutrality in his tone. Rey smiles humorlessly at the wall. 

“Yes.” 

“What do you know about telepathy?” Rey’s head whips back to the man, her eyes widening. She knows what happens to people who deal in the invisible trade. They are taken to asylums where they're poked and studied for the rest of their days. Or worse. But she also knows that the trade doesn’t exist anymore, so she can’t understand why he’s asking her. 

“Nothing,” she says. “It’s not real. At least, not anymore.” He makes a low, noncommittal hum in the back of his throat. “Did you bring me here? Did you treat my wound?” Rey continues quickly, trying to shift the subject. 

“Yes,” the man responds simply, and any gratitude Rey may have felt withers at the shortness of his tone. “Don’t lie to me, scavenger,” he continues, and Rey’s pulse spikes again. “I will be able to tell.” 

She frowns at this, both bewildered and angered. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m not lying about _anything_ ,” Rey says vehemently. 

“We’ll see,” he responds. Something next to his knee moves and Rey realizes it’s his hands. He raises his arms to his hood and brushes it back off his head, then pulls his goggles off and pushes the cloth around his jaw down to pool at the base of his throat. 

Rey blinks. The dying light casts him in shadows, but even in full clarity, she thinks it would be a strange face. He is pale, with a narrow chin, prominent nose, and a wide, full mouth. His hair spills over his brow in long inky waves, and the first thing Rey thinks is: _He looks so young_. 

The man shifts, moving so that he’s kneeling closer to Rey’s face and she finds she cannot bide lying quiet and vulnerable below him, so she struggles into a seated position, ignoring the white flash of pain in her side, and props her back against the cabin wall. Even at this change, he’s still much taller than she is. 

He blinks at her, and his mouth pulls down a bit. “What do you know about telepathy?” he asks her again, and Rey doesn’t understand why he does. 

“I already told you, I don’t know anyth—" Rey cuts herself off when she feels something akin to shapeless fingers running themselves along her _mind_. She winces and shakes her head, trying to dislodge the unsettling sensation. But if anything, it only intensifies. Rey looks at him. “What? What is—" she hates how frightened she sounds. 

“Don’t be afraid," he cuts in, and oh, how soft his voice is. He pauses to swallow, and Rey feels something tremble against her temple. “I feel it, too.” 

Rey closes her eyes, presses her tongue to her teeth, and breathes in the ocean. The one place she goes—in her mind, in her sleep, when the hunger is raking nails in her gut—when she finds herself giving in to the fight, to the fear, and needs even a shred of peace. When she exhales, her mouth is salty with the crest of a wave, even though she knows she’s never been there; even though she _knows_ she can’t possibly taste the flavor of the tides, she does all the same. 

She screws her eyes shut tighter, eyebrows drawing together, as she grabs hold of the feeling grasping at her mind and _pushes_. She feels sweat bead at her hairline, and she grits her teeth, pushing harder. 

Suddenly, everything around her _...stops_. Everything coalesces to the singularity of void, and all she can hear is the rapidly striking pulse of someone’s heart, in an echoed reply to her own. Her breath hitches, and then the rage pours in, dripping like hot sand down her spine. And the fear; so _much_ fear. She doesn’t know why she is so _afraid._

_Not strong enough. Not strong enough. Not strong enough. Not_ enough _._ The whisper chases every beat of her breath, licking at her with a hot, poisoned truth. 

Rey’s eyes fly open and she looks directly into the man’s startled dark gaze; she looks directly into _him_. 

“You’re afraid,” she starts, and for some reason it comes out a whisper, more damning for the lack of sound. His eyes widen, and Rey knows that she has won something. Everything settles into a washed out clarity, and she _knows_. 

“You’re afraid that you’ll never be strong enough,” she finishes, feeling triumphant, even as something scrapes at her, asking her to take note. _Of what?_

Before Rey can determine the answer something warm and thick once again settles over her vision, greying it out, as she feels herself slumping sideways. She barely has time to bite out a furious _No!_ into the space of her mind before everything goes dark. 

  


. 

  
The second time Rey comes to she’s more prepared for the sense of disorientation she feels upon finding herself in surroundings that are still unfamiliar. She brushes this quickly aside and easily finds anger in its place. 

“What did you do?” she snarls at the man who’s leaning against the wall across from where she’s laying, his head tipped back and eyes closed. It’s fully dark outside now, the only light in the cabin coming from a kerosene lamp that’s sitting in the few feet of space between them. 

He opens his eyes and looks directly at her. “You were overwhelmed. You needed to sleep,” he replies evenly. 

Rey sneers at him, “What I need is _none_ of your concern. And you don’t know anything about me.” She pushes herself first into a seated position, and then slowly, awkwardly, to her feet. He watches her through the whole arduous process, but says nothing. 

“I’m leaving,” she tells him abruptly, once she can think outside of the pain. She needs to get away from him, from the sinuous openness of her mind, hanging in wait like a backward suggestion. 

She goes to take a step, and the agony in her side nearly brings her to her knees. Rey’s eyes water, but she determinedly forces herself straight again, gnashing her teeth against the searing lurch in her gut. She presses her clammy forehead to her arm, where it’s braced against the wall, and exhales shakily. 

Rey hears the sound of fabric rustling across wood, like he’s moving closer to her, and she swings her head toward him. 

“ _Don’t touch me_!” and maybe it’s the panic in her voice or the viciousness with which she says it, because he freezes in place, arms falling to his sides. 

“You need help,” he tells her quietly, palms open, like he’s trying to placate a small child. Rey seethes. 

“Don’t tell me what I need,” she spits, but her exhaustion has drained the bite from her tone. She slides slowly to the floor, hands cradling her torso. Rey drops her head back against the wall when she sits, sweat rolling down her spine. 

Minutes pass as they watch each other, wary and taut as animals, until finally, he sighs and closes his eyes again, mimicking her position on the opposite wall. 

His silence is stretching her too thin. It makes her skin _itch_ ; she looks away. Rey closes her eyes and takes stock of the situation, weighing the strengths and picking at weaknesses, ordering things, just as she’s done all of her life. 

Rey presses her tongue to the ridges of her teeth, searching, and takes slow, calculated breaths. 

More minutes stretch past and the silence has grown into something abrasive. She snaps. 

“What are you doing?” she asks the man to break the oppressive pressure in her chest. 

“Waiting,” he tells her simply. Rey takes the bait. 

“For what?” 

“My men. In time, even they should be able to overcome their own ineptitude and locate my position,” he says, an air of annoyance clouding his words. 

_He contacted them?_ She stares at him. “You have a comm phone?” _Why didn’t he mention this earlier? Why wouldn’t he_ — 

“No,” he replies and something about the word rings strange. 

“You’re lying,” Rey spits, eyes narrowing, and she has to hear it; she needs to know that she’s right. The conversation has tilted and she feels like she’s running on sand, her every step an uneven slip. 

The man opens his eyes slowly, and Rey finds herself watching the reflection of the lamp in their depths. She thinks she’s looking for honesty; she thinks she may already know. She swallows. 

“Why did you take me?” Rey asks, the sound of her voice too loud in the hush of the room. 

His eyebrows draw together slightly, as if he’s trying to read her in the same way she’s trying to read him. “You were injured. Did you want me to leave you there?” He doesn’t look away. Neither does she. 

“No,” Rey says after a moment, and she tastes the truth of what she says. “That’s not why.” He doesn’t respond. 

“What were you after?” she continues, finding herself waiting his response with an increasing pulse. 

“It doesn’t matter,” he responds. “Not anymore.” Rey curls her fingers into fists, bunching the fabric of her top, which feels stiff with sweat and blood. _Her blood._ She narrows her eyes. 

“It does to me,” she tells him, echoing his earlier response, and for some reason, she feels the feverish heat of anticipatory rush. Maybe her wound is already infected. 

“Tell me everything you know about the invisible trade,” he says again, voice a gentle command, and Rey finds herself suddenly thinking about the stories she’d heard whispered around the pit as a child. The words are bubbling up her throat, unwarranted, tickling her tongue, but then she swallows hard and blinks. 

“I’ve already told you. I know nothing, and there is no such thing.” 

He shifts and leans toward her again, eyes looking wild in the grasping shadows thrown from the light. “Then tell me about the ocean.” 

Rey’s blood freezes. 

“What?” her voice is barely a whisper. 

“Tell me about it,” he says, in a rich, coaxing thrum. “Tell me what you see when you close your eyes and pretend you’re not trapped in Jakku. That you’re not—” 

“ _Stop_ ,” Rey cuts in, and she hardly recognizes her own voice. Her torso aches; something under her skin is kindling, pouring fire along her bones. 

“So _lonely_ , stuck in the heat and the sand and your dreams of the sea. What is it like when you breathe in the—” 

“Stop!” Rey snarls, and it’s pulsing now, at the back of her skull, angry and watchful and _alive_. 

“Tell me how you wish yourself _free_. How it feels at night when you’re too hungry to sleep, and you feed yourself lies. How you say, _they’ll_ —” 

“ _STOP_!” Rey screams, her hands flying up to ball into fists next to her ears as she wrenches her eyes shut. She thinks the windows rattle, but it’s hard to hear anything clearly over her ragged breaths and racing heart. She’s trembling all over. 

Rey forces herself to open her eyes after she doesn’t hear else anything from the man. When her vision clears her mouth goes dry. He’s lying on his back, artlessly sprawled. His long limbs are tangled and his eyes are closed. 

She allows herself to the count of five, before she leans forward onto her hands and crawls the few feet over to him, ignoring the mind-numbing pain of her injury. 

When he doesn’t move, she nudges his hip with her knee. Still nothing. 

With shaking hands, Rey grabs the lamp and shines it over him. His chest is rising and falling evenly, and she immediately swallows down the beginnings of anything near relief before turning the light toward his face. 

This close to him, she notices a haphazard smattering of moles and freckles that mark his pale skin. His eyelashes are a smear of dark casting long shadows over high cheekbones. Rey is again startled by how young he looks. 

She scans the lamp along the length of his body, and quickly shuts her eyes in thanks when she catches the flash of what appears to be a knife handle from where it glints from its place on his belt. Rey’s eyes dart to his face again, before she steels herself and pulls the weapon from him in one swift motion. It briefly snags before giving way with a soft groan of leather. 

Rey holds her body completely still for a moment, and when he doesn’t stir, she bares her teeth and pushes herself to her feet, moving with a determination that feels stronger than before. 

She folds the knife into the band of her own belt, and readjusts her fingers around the handle of the lamp. 

With careful steps, Rey makes for the door, pausing only for the briefest of moments to glance back at the man, before she twists the doorknob and walks out into the humid, black night. 

  


. 

  
Rey pushes all thoughts of hurts to the back of her mind. This is an old, familiar practice: working through the distress, stepping beyond the pain. Enduring is something she’s long known how to do. 

The lamp is bright in the gaping darkness of the woods, and Rey focuses on the light it spreads, using her free hand to brush across the barks of trees she passes. She tries to recall the direction she’d run from earlier, but in the blackness around her it’s nearly impossible to tell. 

She doesn’t know how long she keeps on in this manner, blind step after blind step, straining toward hope. It could be minutes; it could be hours. But just as she’s convinced herself she’s never getting anywhere, something crackles a ways off from where she stands, and she stops, staring warily in the direction from which it came. 

The sound becomes louder, and it’s clear now to Rey that something is _moving_ in the woods, heading in her direction. The muscles of her thighs pull tight with readiness, and her free hand drifts to the hilt of the knife at her hip. She lowers the lantern and wills herself to wait. 

There’s a booming crash a few feet in front of her, and Rey pulls the knife from her belt, brandishing it with one shaking hand. 

“ _Rey_!?” she hears, an incredulous shrill of sound, overly loud in the quiet around them. 

“Finn!?” she cries, raising the light to his face for proof. Sure enough, Finn squints at her through the beam of brightness, covered in dirt and wielding a knobbed branch in both hands, like he was on the edge of attack. Seeing Rey’s face, he throws the branch to the side and rushes forward, crushing her in his embrace. 

Rey yelps in pain, her side sizzling at the contact, but she raises an arm and drapes it around his shoulders anyway. 

He pulls back to look at her. “Where have you been?” he asks, as though she had just decided to dip out for a quick jaunt. 

“I don’t know,” Rey responds. “A cabin?” 

Finn’s face distorts with confusion. “What? Where?” he inquires. 

“I don’t know,” Rey repeats. “What happened?” she asks him, still disbelieving it’s really Finn, even as he stands before her. 

“I’m not sure,” Finn answers, and he sounds perplexed. “I just suddenly…passed out. When I woke up, the officers were still down for the count, so I guess they must’ve passed out, too. I didn’t stay to check, though,” he says, “I came looking for you.” He rubs at a scratch on his neck. “I’ve been out here for hours. But I swear I’ve been walking in circles.” He sounds flustered, but Rey can’t think beyond one simple, resounding fact. 

“You came back for me,” she says, the question she’d meant to ask shifting instead to a quiet statement, coated with awe. 

Finn’s brow creases. “Of course I did,” he says, and again he sounds as though it’s a mere piece of an obvious fact. Rey can’t reconcile this in relation to herself. “I told you I’d bring you home. 

“Now, come on,” he continues, “We’re never getting anywhere unless we can get out of this forest.” 

Rey tucks her stolen knife back into her belt, wincing as she passes her side. 

“What’s wrong?” Finn asks, catching her face as it contorts with discomfort. “What happened?” 

“Nothing,” Rey tells him. “I got a bit of a cut,” she lies, “but it’s just a scratch. I’m fine.” 

Finn eyes her skeptically but decides not to comment, instead leaning over to once again take her hand. 

Their trek this time is much slower, hindered by their fatigue and the blackness of their surroundings. As they go, Rey fills him in on the last few hours, skipping over the parts that she herself cannot understand. She tells him she doesn’t know who the man is, or why he seemed to want to help. 

“None of it makes any sense,” she whispers, after they’ve been trudging through thick bracken for what feels like centuries. 

“Nothing about the First Order does,” Finn responds, just as quietly. “They’re maniacal. I don’t think they operate on the same level as the rest of us.” 

Rey goes to respond but cuts herself off when she notices a change in the pattern of trees just barely visible in the lantern’s light up ahead. She nudges Finn with her elbow. “Look,” Rey drops his hand to point in front of them. Finn looks to where she’s indicating, then turns to her and smiles. They pick up their pace with renewed energy. 

A few minutes later, they break through the last of the trees onto a wide, open stretch of road. Rey thumps Finn’s chest excitedly, “We’re out!” she cries, not caring how loud her voice sounds echoing along the unending length of pavement. 

“I don’t care if I ever see another tree again,” Finn says, brushing off his arms. Rey notices they’re bare. 

“Your jacket,” Rey says, and wishes she hadn’t when she sees Finn deflate. 

“I left it in the truck,” he tells her. When she opens her mouth to respond, he cuts her off. “It’s fine, it’s just a jacket,” he says, but he sounds like he doesn’t quite believe that himself. 

Rey touches his shoulder briefly and then glances around them. “Which way?” she asks. 

“We should probably try and head toward Takodana,” Finn replies, “We’ll be able to comm base from there.” 

Rey nods in agreement. “Okay, so which direction is that?” 

“I have no idea,” Finn says. Rey sighs. 

“This way,” she decides for them, hoping she’s right, but having no real way of knowing. Finn follows her anyway. 

They walk in silence for a while, the sounds of their footsteps against the asphalt abnormally loud. Rey’s about to speak just to alleviate her nerves when something tugs at her attention. It’s quiet, but a sound she knows well: the mechanical rumble of an engine. 

She jerks her head to look behind them and tugs at Finn’s elbow. “There’s someone coming,” she tells him, pulling him off to the side of the road. Headlights are beginning to cut through the darkness. 

“Get in the ditch,” Finn’s voice is a whispered bid, and together they turn and scramble down across wet grass and mud. Rey’s fingers fumble with the switch of the lantern, a strum of relief wracking her body when she manages to shut it off. 

There’s a wavering beam disrupting the steady cast of the headlights, and it swings back and forth in the air above them in wide, sweeping arcs, like the pendulum of a clock she’d once scavenged. 

Finn flips onto his stomach as the light draws nearer, holding himself up on his knees as he arches his neck to look. Rey threads her fingers through the thick grass on the ground, anchoring herself. There’s sudden movement next to her, and Finn makes a wordless cry. Before she can even react, he’s hurtling himself out of the ditch. 

Rey twists over, stifling a gasp as the movement rips at her wound. Through the diffused, watery light of the headlights she can see Finn inexplicably running _toward_ the vehicle. 

“Finn!” she shrieks, all semblance of quiet drained in light of her dismay. She lifts herself onto her elbows, clenching her teeth as she pulls herself up and out of the trench. 

She straightens and then panics, because someone is running toward Finn, even faster than he’s running to them. 

She’s about to shout his name again, but it stalls in her throat when the person throws their arms around Finn, and Finn immediately returns the embrace. There’s a dizzying swirl of light as the person drops the flashlight they were holding, and it rolls to a stop near the edge of the road. 

Rey takes a tentative step forward, then another, becoming more sure the more she walks. She’s nearly at the front of the SUV when the man holding Finn finally lets go. The gravel beneath her feet crunches, and Finn twists to look at her. 

“Rey!” he gasps, like he’s learning how to breathe again. “It’s _Poe_!” he says, sounding half-elated, half-disbelieving. “This is Poe!” Finn’s still sort of shouting, and the man next to him winces a bit, but he’s smiling. 

The man steps away from Finn toward Rey, holding out a hand. “As you may have heard, I’m Poe.” Rey looks at his handsome, smiling face, then down at his hand. She reaches hers out, smiling back at him, and shakes it. She has the brief realization that she’s never done this before outside of a trade. 

“I’m Rey,” she tells him. His grasp is firm but friendly, and Rey is flooded with relief. 

“How did you find us?” Finn asks, once Rey drops Poe’s hand. Poe briefly drops down to retrieve the flashlight, clicking it off, before turning to the opened door of the vehicle and leaning in. 

For the first time, Rey sees the other people inside of the vehicle: one extremely bearded man behind the wheel, and two other faces popping up from behind. She waves, and the driver waves one massive hand back, looking slightly bewildered. It’s a feeling she can understand. 

Poe is walking back toward Finn and Rey with something in his hands. When he gets closer she recognizes it: Finn’s jacket. 

“My jacket!” Finn whoops gleefully, and Poe smiles. 

“ _My_ jacket,” he corrects, but his eyes are soft as he hands it to Finn. “We were heading to hijack a First Order culling, when I saw your truck in a ditch on the side of the road.” His face hardens, “When I got there, it was empty. But you’d left this behind.” Poe reaches out a hand to trace along Finn’s shoulder after the jacket’s resumed its place on his body. 

“We ran into some trouble at a First Order checkpoint,” Finn tells Poe. “I think they recognized me.” He pauses. “Hux was there,” Finn finishes and Poe frowns, a look passing between them. 

Poe rubs at the back of his neck. “I ran into similar trouble yesterday in Takodana. My cover was blown, and some First Order clowns wrangled me into one of their satellite holds. If it weren’t for the chuckleheads in the truck busting me out earlier, I would still be there,” he sighs, a tired, gusty sound. “I got bad info, Finn,” he continues, “I never made it to Jakku.” 

“I know,” Finn responds and Poe’s brow furrows. “I went there looking when you didn’t come back,” Finn explains, while Poe’s mouth tilts up. “That’s where I found this one,” Finn says, jutting his chin in Rey’s direction. 

Poe turns to look at her anew. “You’re from Jakku?” 

Rey nods, struggling to find her voice. Poe whistles through his teeth 

“Bet you have one hell of a spirit,” he tells her, and Rey feels her chest warm. “We’re lucky to have you.” 

Finn starts to correct Poe, but Rey cuts him off. “Thank you,” she responds, then wonders, “Where was this culling you were headed to?” 

“A warehouse not far from here,” he answers, then looks back at Finn. “Maz let it drop as the First Order goons were busting up our dinner last night. They were apoplectic,” Poe’s smile has taken on a dreamy edge. “It was beautiful,” he says, “I love that woman.” 

But his smile drops quickly, and he shoves the flashlight into his back pocket. “Maz heard there’s supposed to be a whole horde of people that some filthy skin trader’s rounded up,” Poe continues. “It’s an old First Order storage facility, “ he looks at Finn meaningfully, “an offshoot of Starkiller Labs.” 

Rey’s forehead wrinkles in confusion. Finn’s face goes tight, as her turns to her to explain. “They produce all sorts of terrible shit there. Pills that make you forget, toxins that make the mind suggestible, things that make it easy for them to bulldoze your personality, and replace it with their own stamp,” he says with a dark seriousness that frightens her. 

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Rey asks after a moment of tense silence. “Let’s go.” Finn’s eyes widen but then he smiles, and he turns to Poe, who hesitates. 

“This is going to be dangerous,” Poe says, voice thick with concern. “Like, more than the usual level of danger. Skin traders are a particularly nasty sort,” his eyes are boring into Finn’s, and his voice drops. “I just got you back,” he whispers. 

Finn briefly softens before steeling again. “And _I’m_ not losing you again. I’m coming with you,” he says in a tone that brooks no argument. “ _We’re_ coming with you,” he amends, nodding to Rey. 

Poe watches Finn for a moment, some silent conversation waging between them, before he sighs. “Fine,” he gives in, “but you’re under strict orders to stay _safe_.” Poe looks at Rey, “Both of you.” 

“Duly noted, Captain,” Finn answers and he’s smiling again. He turns to Rey and waits for her to hop into the cab of the vehicle, before following her in and shutting the door. 

  


. 

  
The ride to the warehouse is relatively short, but in that time Rey learns the names of the other Resistance members—the driver is called _Chewie_ , she’d been told in a voice like a growl—and the basics of their plan. 

The darkness giving them an advantage, they’re going to infiltrate the warehouse on foot, neutralize any First Order threat, grab the captives, and hustle them out. Once they’re free, Chewie will detonate an explosive device he’s brought, destroying any of the chemicals that First Order has stored there. 

“And if something goes wrong?” Rey had asked, and several sets of eyes had swung toward her. 

Poe shrugged, “We improvise.” Rey began to wonder if the Resistance as a whole operated entirely on a mixture of shells of ideas and pure luck. 

“How are you doing?” Finn questions Rey from his place on the seat next to her. 

Rey swallows back an unsteady laugh, “Ask me when this is over,” she responds. 

He lifts a hand to clasp Rey’s shoulder. She pats his hand absently, while pressing her tongue to her teeth. She pushes the seizing hysteria out of her mind, and instead, thinks of an ocean. 

But that image conjures up others: ones featuring wraith-like men with deep voices and too-knowing thoughts. Her breath hitches and she pushes her hand to her side, which flares up again as if it’s angry that it’s been forgotten. Rey hunches protectively in on herself. 

“Hey,” Finn says, voice quiet, “it’s going to be okay.” He moves his hand to her back while Rey tries not to vomit. That same living _thing_ is still pacing along the edges of her thoughts, waiting to be let in—let _out_ —but she shoves it down, and tries to breathe. 

“We’re here,” Chewie grunts from the front, killing the engine and cutting the headlights. Rey staggers a bit while counting her breaths in her head. 

They park along the side of the road about a quarter mile away from the warehouse, which sits blankly in its own yellowed halo of lights. There are two black vehicles parked in front, and an old, beat-up truck a little ways off from those. 

“Okay,” Poe says quietly, looking around at the collection of faces. “We know the plan. Eric and I will go in first, scan the area. Chewie and Tallie will take second wing, set the bomb. Rey and Finn, get upstairs unseen. We need eyes in the air. When we’re all clear, we get them out, then _we_ get out.” He waits for everyone to nod. “Let’s go.” 

They make their way towards the warehouse as quietly and quickly as possible. Poe and Eric head in first, but not before Rey catches Poe reach down to squeeze Finn’s hand one last time. The door on the side of the building is mercifully unlocked, and their entrance is a silent, uninterrupted movement. After a minute, Chewie and Tallie steal through the door, too. 

Finn turns to Rey. “You ready?” he whispers, and she nods. When they push through, the lab looks empty, merely rows of tables and a vast darkness that’s engulfing. Something seems strange. 

Finn taps Rey on the shoulder, breaking her thoughts, and she looks to where he’s pointing. There’s a set of stairs to the right, leading up to the second floor. She nods, and they climb them silently, winding their way through a series of rooms at the top. 

Something _is_ strange. Everything in Rey is on overdrive; every breath is a drink of air, every small sound a scream. She feels she could commune with the _floor_ and it would understand her. She shakes her head. Something is wrong. She tugs at Finn’s jacket, so he turns to look at her. 

“Where are all the people?” she whispers to him, and he pauses, looking around. 

“We have to keep looking,” he whispers back, but Rey already knows they won’t find anyone. She doesn’t know how she can tell, but she knows that she’s right. She doesn’t… _sense_ anyone. 

But when they push through a door to a gangway overlooking a wide room below, Rey suddenly feels _someone_ very clearly, like another person is inhaling inside her own lungs. Her pulse quickens. 

“ _Finn_!” she cries as quietly as she can, but anything else she’d been about to say stalls on her tongue when she sees _him_ —tall and broad and somehow, impossibly, _here_ —standing in front of a man with drooped shoulders and gray hair. 

If Finn says anything in response, she doesn’t hear him, she’s entirely focused on the man below them, and the pieces of conversation that strain up to her ears. 

“—already told your people, there _is_ no one else,” the older man is saying, and his voice sounds gruff and tired. “It’s just me.” He pauses and Rey sees him smile, though it seems forced. “It took me weeks to plant that story. I was trusting it would trickle up to you,” he finishes. 

The man from the cabin is still mask-less, and even at this distance, Rey can see the raging emotions play across his face. Or, maybe she can _feel_ them. She doesn’t know. 

“You’re a fool,” he tells the older man, “but then you always were. What did you hope to accomplish with this plan of yours?” 

“I hoped to find my _son_ ,” the man replies immediately. 

“Your son is _gone_ ,” the man in black hisses, but the older man again gives that same sad smile. 

“No,” he responds, “he’s not.” Something in Rey coils. “Come home, Ben,” he says, and it’s shaded like a plea.“We miss you.” Something in Rey _cinches_. 

She watches the younger man’s shoulders curve inward. “I can’t,” he says, “it’s too late.” 

“No,” the older man repeats. “Nothing is too late,” he says, even as the man from the cabin— _Ben?_ —shakes his head in disagreement. 

“I’m being torn apart,” he tells the older man, and Rey _feels_ it. “I want to be free of this pain.” She brings her knuckles up to press against her mouth. “I know what I have to do,” he continues,” and he sounds so _young_ , “but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it.” 

The older man steps forward, closing the gap between them, and their conversation is lost with the shift. 

Something is clawing at Rey’s senses, tugging at her awareness. Something is off. 

She’s dimly aware of sounds coming from somewhere outside of the room, but they are distorted and too far away. She’s about to turn to the noise, when a blur of movement from below grabs her attention. Before she can even blink, the older man staggers, then reaches a hand up to touch the face of the man from the cabin. 

Rey sees a protrusion of metal from the older man’s back, and she _screams_. The man in black spins toward the sound, and their eyes meet as the noise from outside bursts through, and with it, the clear ring of a gunshot. 

He jerks and drops to his knees, breaking their eye contact, and Rey is suddenly aware that Finn is calling her name. She looks at him and everything rushes back in around her. 

“Come on!” he’s yelling, grabbing her wrist, and pulling her back through the door they came in. “We have to go!” 

They rush down the stairs, the sounds of chaos boiling throughout the warehouse, which now feels labyrinthine and vicious in its size. They find the door and Finn barrels through, dragging Rey after him. 

They’re almost to their vehicle when he stops, his eyes frantically searching the space around them. 

“ _Where’s Poe_!?” he yells, voice gone shrill with fear. But Rey can’t respond; her chest has begun throbbing with someone else’s pulse. 

She turns and her eyes lock onto the man from the cabin as he walks towards them. With each step, there’s a black line snaking along the ground in his wake. She thinks Finn may be talking to her again, but all she can see is the man, who’s still drawing near while she watches. When he gets even closer, Rey realizes he’s trailing blood, and she notices he’s cradling his left side. 

_We match,_ she thinks suddenly—wildly—as her own wound breathes new fire against her torso. 

“It’s just us now,” the man tells her, when he’s a few meters away, and he sounds hollowed out. 

_Just_ _us,_ Rey repeats dazedly in her mind, but as she thinks it, Finn runs into view, charging at the man with a pipe raised above his head. 

“Finn!” Rey shouts, but it’s too late. The man in black lifts a gloved hand and curls his fingers, and outside of any reason she knows, the pipe flies from Finn’s hands into his own. 

Finn continues to barrel toward him, and manages to land one solid punch to the man’s torso. He doubles over briefly, his breathing ragged, fresh blood pouring from his side. But as he straightens, he lifts his arm with him, and in one fell swoop, cracks the pipe across the Finn’s back. 

Finn buckles, and Rey starts to shake. 

The thing inside of her flowers in her veins; she feels so full with it, she thinks she may burst. The rocks of the graveled drive around them begin lifting into the air, while Rey’s whole body trembles with the effort to hold the growing maw inside of her. 

She looks at Finn, where he’s lying facedown in the dirt, and the air is cleaved by the groaning of the metallic bodies of the vehicles around them as they start to crumple. Her fingers twitch while she stares at her friend, and the trucks start to move, their tires sliding in inches along the ground. 

Her head whips back up as she hears the crunching of boots. The man is only a few feet from her now—his dark eyes wild—looking at her with awe writ large across his face. 

There is detritus from the lot swirling in the air around them, and Rey wants to laugh. She wants to scream. 

He steps closer to her, and the headlights of a car flare on, their reflection bouncing off of the trees back onto his face in strange blue hues. She wants to cry. 

She grabs at the air and, somehow, the pipe flies from the ground and into her hand. When she grasps it, everything else drops to the ground, raining debris like some nightmarish storm. 

Rey doesn’t look away from the man as she swings the pipe up towards his face. Quick as lightning, he parries her attack with a sword that he’s pulled from his hip. Rey starts as she realizes this is the thing she’d just seen buried in the older man, the one he’d just _killed_. 

She grunts and spins out of his reach, then shifts and uses her momentum to strengthen the surge as she runs back toward him. But he deflects it again. 

She screams in frustration, in agony—her agony, _his_ , she doesn’t _know_ —and rocks start drifting up from the ground again. 

Suddenly, the world erupts into fire as the warehouse explodes, sending the gravel flying. The sound blots out her hearing and a hot gust of wind pitches her to the side, but Rey pushes _back_ , and remains on her feet, untouched by burning, by stone, by _pain._

Her ears are ringing and when she looks up, the man is watching her again, his face aglow from the blaze, and Rey thinks, strangely: _This is how you are meant to look. Always this_ alive, _surrounded by light._

She shivers and then throws her arm out again but the man catches her thrust with the flat of his sword. She struggles and the man presses his weight down through his arms, bending toward her. Strands of his black hair are clinging to his face, so pale, so young. 

Rey’s ears are still muted, but his voice cuts through like he’s speaking inside of her. “You need a teacher!” he sounds half-mad, and Rey thinks that he is. _Maybe I am, too._

She furrows her brow and looks at him, watches as his eyes go even darker when she does. _Who are you?_ she thinks, _How did you come to be here?_

But what comes out is, “Stop telling me what I need!” and when he blinks at her, she charges forward, and this time the metal catches his shoulder. He grunts in surprise and Rey’s hearing clears to the sound of faraway voices. She levels a kick at his knee and he staggers. 

The thing inside Rey is keening now—yes, _yes_ —and she inhales and breathes it out, _freeing_ it, letting the curling energy fuel her movements. 

She ducks under the man’s too-wide swing, and spins back toward him, dropping the pipe and pulling his knife from her belt. When she strikes, it catches his skin as she drags it up his neck, his jaw, his cheek. He rears back while her boot connects with his torso. 

She pushes with her foot and he falls to the ground, and Rey shudders and thinks, _Enough._ His eyes fall closed; her breathing is uneven. 

“Rey!” she hears Poe’s voice, and she looks up to see him running toward her, Chewie at his side. “ _Finn_!” Poe cries, voice fearful, when his eyes find Finn’s form, still immobile on the pavement. 

Rey breaks into a trot to close the distance, and she hears Poe say, thankfully, “He’s breathing!” before Chewie bends to lift Finn’s body into his arms. 

Rey feels helpless. The world is spinning, and the laceration on her side feels overly hot. She looks down and sees that her torso is covered in blood. Her head swims. 

She feels a touch at her shoulder and startles, but it’s only Poe. He glances down at the man in black, still lying motionless and bleeding on the ground, and then, wide-eyed, Poe looks back at Rey. 

“We have to get out of here,” he tells her, but it sounds like he’s speaking in a tongue she doesn’t know. “ _Rey_ ,” he says, jostling her a bit, and she nods, letting him drag her to the truck. Poe deposits her into the front seat, before hopping in the back to hover over Finn where he’s draped across the floor. 

She’s dimly aware of Chewie buckling her in, then swinging the truck into a mean turn and punching the gas, before everything starts to blur. 

“ _Rey_ ,” Chewie growls, but she doesn’t know who that is. 

Everything rolls around her and she hazily starts to laugh when her vision goes dark. 

  


. 

  
When Rey wakes, the world is blindingly bright. She squints against the light for a second and then shuts her eyes. She waits a few moments, listening to the strange beeping noises that surround her, and tries again. 

She’s in a white room, on a bed that’s softer than anything she’s ever slept on before. She looks around and sees that she’s hooked up to a machine, one that’s increasingly beeping the harder she breathes. _Where am I_? 

Rey hears a door opening, and looks to her right, where an elegant older woman steps into the room. Her graying hair is done in elaborate braids atop her head, and her posture is steeled. But her eyes are kind, although they’re rimmed in red, and look unbearably tired. 

“Hello, Rey,” the woman says, once she reaches Rey’s bed. 

Rey swallows, and tries to speak. “Hello,” she croaks, and it scrapes her throat. “How long have I been out?” she asks the woman, who smiles at her. 

“Three days,” the woman responds and the machine monitoring Rey spikes again as she panics. 

_Three days?_ She needs to get back to Jakku. _What if they_ — _They’ll be_ — but even as she thinks it, she knows she hasn’t missed anyone, nor has she been missed. She tries to swallow again, and can’t. 

Rey lifts a hand to her throat to where it feels raw, trying to soothe her own aches, just as she’s always done. But the woman must notice, because she hands Rey a cup of water, which Rey gratefully accepts. 

After one greedy pull, the water sloshing over the edge and down her chin, Rey feels marginally calmer. Water has always had this effect on her, growing up in the desert as she had. _Where there is water, life can endure_. 

“Who are you?” Rey asks the woman, once she’s drained the cup, and then, “Where am I?” 

The woman smiles again. “I’m General Leia Organa,” she replies. “You’re in D’Qar,” she says with a pause. “Welcome to the Resistance.” 

_D’Qar? The_ Resistance _?_ Rey thinks, and then, _Finn!_

“Where’s Finn?” Rey asks the woman— _Leia_. 

“He’s down the hall, still recovering himself. But he should be discharged soon.” Rey sags in relief. “When you’re able to, you can go and see him,” Leia says and then smirks. “That is, if you can move Captain— _Commander_ —Dameron out of the way.” 

Leia leans forward and lowers her voice. “Speaking of Poe, he mentioned something quite interesting to me.” Rey holds herself very still as she waits for her to go on. 

“Rey, I know someone who can help you,”— _You need a teacher!_ —“and with your permission, I’d like to bring him here.” _Him?_ Rey’s breath starts coming too fast. 

“I don’t know what you mean,” she finally replies, defensive again. 

Leia waits a moment and then nods. “Okay,” she says, “I’m sure that Poe was just confused. Or that I misunderstood him.” She pats Rey’s hand where it lays against her chest. “But if you remember something differently, I’ll be here to listen.” 

She turns to leave, but pauses at the door, looking back at Rey. “Thank you, Rey. Be sure to get some rest.” The door clicks shut softly behind her. 

Rey lays there in silence for a while, thoughts whirring in formless loops, before her mind wearies of this and she slowly drifts back into sleep. 

  


. 

  
The next few days pass in a drug-induced blur. She fuzzily registers Poe’s face, and then Chewie’s, but she spends so much time in and out of consciousness, she’s not sure what’s she’s dreamed and what’s actually happened. 

She wonders foggily once, twice, endless times, whether the man in black is dead. But then she can’t think of him at all, because the medicine makes it hard to keep track of what’s real. _Is he dead? Is he real?_

Rey wakens with clarity on what she thinks is her sixth day with the Resistance. This time, when a nurse brings her a tray of food, she wolfs it down, barely taking time to breathe between gulps. 

By the seventh day, she’s walking again, the freshly sutured wound on her side now a barely perceptible twinge. That same evening, the doctors release her to her own devices. 

Rey is at a loss for what to do, before Poe comes into her med-room, after she’s changed into a soft gray set of trousers and top, and informs her he’s to see her to her quarters. 

“My what?” Rey asks, looking at him as though he’s spouted a new limb. 

“Your living space,” he answers, “I’ve already transferred your personal effects there.” When Rey doesn’t move, he tries again. “Come on, there’s someone who wants to see you.” 

Poe leads her down a nondescript hallway, rattling off details as they go. “Mess hall is that way. General Organa’s office is down to the right. Laundry is to our left. The training complex is up ahead.” 

They turn left, moving down another hallway, this one lined with doors. He stops in front of one marked CF9, smiles, and sweeps his arms wide like he’s presenting her with a gift. When she just gapes at him, Poe drops them to his side. 

“Well, here we are,” he says, while Rey still struggles to process his previous overflow of information. “I’m just down the hall and to the right, in BB8.” 

He grins winningly at her again and turns to punch some numbers on a panel above the doorknob. “Your code is 2187,” Poe tells her. “I picked it myself, but you can reprogram it if you’d like.” 

Rey is barely listening, and when the door swings open, she stops pretending entirely, as someone rushes forward and crushes her in a hug. 

“ _Finn_!” she laughs into his shoulder, her own arms coming up around him. 

“Surprise,” she hears Poe say, deadpan, behind her. 

“I’m sorry,” Finn tells Poe, “I couldn’t wait.” 

Rey squeezes his waist and Finn laughs. “I missed you, too,” he says and Rey’s eyes burn. 

  


. 

  
After they fill each other in on the last week—Poe detailing their standoff with the few First Order agents back at Starkiller Labs, after which Rey had apologized to Poe and Finn for the loss of Eric and Tallie—they head to dinner. 

It’s a boisterous affair, and Rey can barely eat for all the sounds crushing in on her. She’s never been around so many people at once, and her cup starts to rattle against the table as she squeezes her eyes tight to block out the noise. 

“Hey,” Finn’s voice cuts through her nerves, his hand on her shoulder, “You okay?” 

Rey exhales and looks up at him. His eyes are worried, and she sees him quickly steal a glance at Poe, who sits across the table from them. 

“Yeah, sorry,” Rey says, “I think it’s the aftereffects of the medicine.” She pushes her food around on her tray. “I’m actually not feeling all that great,” she tells him, “I think I’m going to turn in for the night.” 

She goes to stand but Finn’s hand on her wrist stalls her. “Are you sure?” he asks, and there’s that openness in his face again. Rey softens. 

“I’m sure, Finn,” she responds. “I’ll be alright. I just need some quiet.” He holds her gaze a beat longer and then lets go. 

“Get some sleep,” he tells her and she nods. 

“I will. Thank you,” Rey says, and looks over at Poe. “Both of you.” 

Poe smiles up at her. “Goodnight, sunshine.” 

Rey picks up her tray, pockets an apple, and dumps the rest of the contents in the trash on the way out. She tries not to feel wasteful as she does so; she feels it anyway. 

When she finds room CF9, she toes off her shoes, the soft canvas ones the medics had given her, and starts looking around. There’s a small bathroom to the right, with a toilet and shower stall crammed inside, a low dresser, and a narrow table next to the bed. She runs her fingers lightly over the smooth wood before she walks into the bathroom and turns on the light. 

She blinks at the sudden change in brightness and squints at herself in the mirror. Rey can’t remember the last time she studied her own face, but the image reflecting back at her seems a stranger. She wraps her hands around the basin of the sink and breathes. 

Her hazel eyes are wide, and her skin is paler than she’s ever seen it, her freckles now stand in stark contrast to the tone. She presses her fingers to the hollows of her cheekbones and wonders if she looks as strange to people as she feels to herself. She worries that they can see the entity that breathes under her skin. Rey can’t look any longer. 

She turns off the light and heads into the bedroom, where she drops to the bed unceremoniously. On the small table beside it she sees her old clothes, her _own_ clothes, cleaned and folded neatly. 

On top of the pile she sees the knife—the one she took from the man that night in the cabin; the one she had _branded_ him with—and she feels oddly fragile. She hadn’t realized she still had it. Rey frowns. She doesn’t _want_ it. 

She lifts a hand to rid it from her room, but her fingers instead land gently on the hilt and stay. The metal is cool to the touch, and Rey closes her eyes. Her mouth tastes salty, and she hears the rush of tides in her ears. She wonders if she’s losing her mind. 

Rey lies down on the bed, this one even softer than the one in the med bay, and tries to shut off her brain. After some time it must work, because eventually she feels herself being pulled into sleep. 

  


. 

  
_“Who are you?” his voice from where it sounds behind her is soft, even as it echoes into the emptiness around them._

_Rey turns, and he’s there. He seems taller, somehow, as though she’d been remembering him wrong before, even as he’d stood right in front of her. He’s still dressed in black, though he’s lost the coat, and he looks leaner without it, more vulnerable._

_Rey watches him watch her, and when she breathes in, he exhales on her behalf. His face is bleeding from a brutal slash curving from his brow down to where it dips into his collar, and something in Rey sings with pride at the sight._ I did that. 

_He nods in response to her unspoken thought, and Rey moves forward, even as she wants to turn away. He goes very still, but red gore continues to weep over his skin._

Beautiful, _she thinks abruptly and a muscle twitches under his eye._

_She steps forward again. When he swallows, her eyes track the movement behind the crimson veil that’s painted against the white of his throat. She reaches up to touch it, that soft, defenseless space where his voice lives, and he shivers._

_When her fingertips brush his skin, pain lashes through her, deep, as though seeking to split her very soul._ No, _she thinks savagely,_ this is not my hurt _._ This is not my burden to bear. _He nods mournfully and lifts a gloved hand, but Rey tightens her fingers on his neck and he drops it back to his side._

_“Who are you?” he asks her again, and Rey’s other hand flutters against her thigh. His hand clenches into a fist next to his hip._

_“It doesn’t matter,” she finally tells him, and his skin is very warm. Or maybe it’s the blood._

_“It does to me,” he responds, and she can_ feel _the vibrations of his words against her fingertips. Her thumb catches the edge of the gash and she_ presses _. He trembles._

Rey, _her mind supplies, unbidden, and she bites her tongue and tastes blood._ Hers? _She wonders._ His? 

Rey, _he thinks, and_ how can she know that?How can she _sense_ what he’s thinking? _But the shape of her name as it sounds in his mind still slinks over the base of her neck, scorching along her spine._

_“Rey,” he says, and—_

Rey’s eyes fly open, the sound of his voice echoing in her ears. 

The furniture in the room begins to tremble along with her, and Rey feels sweat drip between her breasts. 

_It’s not real,_ she tells herself, _it’s not real._

Rey brings a shaking hand to her chest, trying to stop her racing pulse, but something feels wet. She looks down and sees blood on her fingertips, on her chest where she’s laid them. Rey bolts from her bed and throws open her door. 

She belatedly realizes she’s barefoot once she’s already running, her feet making loud slapping sounds against the tile. She’s not entirely sure where she’s headed, but she’s following an instinctive direction that’s tugging at her gut. 

Leia opens the door after three frantic knocks, and only when she sees the exhaustion in the older woman’s eyes, does Rey think to wonder at the time. 

But something must show on Rey’s face, or maybe it’s the blood on her chest— _Can she see it? Is it real?_ Rey thinks hysterically—because Leia’s face takes on an alertness that wasn’t previously there. 

“Will you still help me?” Rey asks, her voice reedy. Leia reaches out and presses her fingers to Rey’s wrist, before stepping aside. 

“Come in, Rey,” she says, her touch warm on Rey’s skin. She steps into the woman’s office. 

  


. 

  
A week later—after Rey is starting to get used to operating on as little sleep as possible, and after she’s started exhausting herself to the point of dropping into blank oblivion—she’s standing again in front of Leia’s office door, beckoned here by the woman herself. 

When Rey enters the room, she looks past Leia to the man leaning against the desk. His hair is a graying coppery blond, and the growth of beard on his face is almost white. But his blue eyes are clear and sharp, and when they meet hers, they are kind. 

He pushes off the desk, and the cup of coffee he’d been holding floats gently from his hand— _Prosthetic_ , she notes absently—through the air to land on Leia’s desk, without spilling a drop. 

Her eyes track the path the cup makes with something like hunger, and when she looks up again, she sees the man watching her, the look on his face knowing. 

“Hello, Rey,” he says, extending his other hand to her, “I’m Luke.” 

When she takes it to shake, she feels the same current that whirs through her skin running under his. She releases a breath she feels like she’s been holding for weeks. 

“We have much to learn,” he tells her, and his smile is warm. 

Rey smiles back. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry again for the length of this. I mean, really, what? What happened here? This first part was a mirroring of _The Force Awakens_ but that will quickly diverge come the final parts. Also, apologies for the lack of Kylo. In reworking the scenes of TFA, using Rey as the singular lens, I realized he's not really around all that much. Who knew? 
> 
> I promise the next parts will make up for any lack of Kylo here.


End file.
